Our Schools Are Failing: We Need to Engage Boys Where They Are

Megan Rosker agrees with David Brooks that we need to understand how boys best learn and work together to collectively insure their success.

New York Times author and commentator David Brooks writes about the need for educators and parents to embrace more diversity in their understanding of how to educate children in his recent post “Honor Code.” In today’s world, we have a culture that heavily favors qualities most often found in girls. Schoolchildren are asked to sit longer, focus and concentrate more, and read earlier. They are told not to roughhouse or play violent games on the playground. In many schools, there are no longer competitive sports because we don’t want anyone’s feelings to be hurt. Kids gather in the friendship circle, hold hands, sing and share their feelings. If my five year old daughter could design a school, this is what it would look like. (It would also be painted pink with rainbows and everyone would eat jelly toast and play tea party and there be absolutely no boys, especially her brothers!) If our idea of a proper school lines up this closely with my daughter’s vision of a utopian education we have a problem. Yet this is what I see — that we have gone too far in embracing a culture that doesn’t embrace our boys.

When we tell our boys too often to stop bring gross and playing rough we are telling them the instinctual way they want to play is wrong. When we tell them to stop being loud and stop playing space alien where everyone dies because they have been shot in the eye with a poisonous dart, we aren’t embracing the fact that for many boys this is the kind of imaginative play they love. What’s wrong with that? Why do we have so much trouble actually embracing the diverse type of learning and play that boys want and need?

We pay lip service to wanting diversity, but as Mr. Brooks points out we actually have a very homogenous educational atmosphere. We expect all students to act and learn in a similar manner and if not, we want to intervene until they do. This is not diversity.

If we actually created a school that was founded in the principles of diversity, people would rise and fall on their merit. Instead, we are setting up our children to believe that they rise and fall on whether they adhere to the policies of the group, the culture, the whole. We are leaning heavily in the direction of our children acting and learning as one gender. Is this the right way to educate kids?

We have reached a point of being fearful of children succeeding or failing. We don’t want our collective kids to shine in the classroom or on the sport field because if one person is succeeding it also means there are those who are failing. We are petrified of the reality that not everyone can win and what if it is our kid who is losing. We fear the judgment of our friends and neighbors because we know with that judgment we will undoubtedly judge ourselves and question ourselves as parents. We worry our kids will grow up to hate us if we don’t ensure their success. We seek our children’s approval by giving away success. We fill their bookshelves with awards for arm wrestling, the tri-state area hopscotch competition and participants awards for bowling, the kazoo choir and completely two weeks of summer camp.

But what if we are wrong? What if they grow up weaker, feeling entitled to success they haven’t earned? Kids, especially boys, need competition; they need to succeed on their merit so that they know what they have to uniquely offer the world is worthwhile. It is a huge detriment to our children to continue to create a homogenous educational culture that is heavily weighted with feminine traits. It isn’t fair to our sons. As women, we rebelled when men didn’t embrace our strengths, when society shunned our intellect and leadership. Now we have flipped the coin and are spending a great deal of our time repressing our sons in a very similar way that young girls were repressed prior to the feminist movement in the west.

What is so difficult about embracing that each gender, each individual, learns and plays differently? Our boys are not succeeding in school. It is time to consider their needs and how they learn. While it may initially make us uncomfortable to think that we are actively repressing our sons, it is in their best interest to start talking about this elephant in the classroom and as Mr. Brooks says “schools must engage people where they are.” We need teachers, school leaders and parents who are willing to embrace the idea that boys aren’t rambunctious cretins, but in their masculinity they have a greatness to offer the world.

About Megan Rosker

Megan Rosker is the mom of three young children, a former teacher and ed and play advocate. She writes about how to change education and the culture of childhood in America. Her advocacy has been featured in the New York Times and she is the recent recipient of the Daily Points of Light Award.

Leave a Reply

9 Comments on "Our Schools Are Failing: We Need to Engage Boys Where They Are"

Until we begin looking at differential treatment from an early age and show just how our individual environments create different mental/emotional/social conditioning; how average stress is made up of layers of mental frictions that take up real mental energy, and how differential treatment creates real advantages for girls today, we will continue to be at a loss to explain the growing Male Crisis. Please do not buy into the genetic models, for they will only make it much worse for Male students. The problem is more complex than school curriculum or boy chemistry. The problem involves two entirely different treatments… Read more »

[…] This comment was by Bill, on the post “Our Schools Are Failing: Why We Need to Engage Boys Where They Are” […]

0

| ReplyShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Bill

4 years 5 months ago

I agree that boys should be allowed to be themselves. As the father of two daughters, I’ve seen for myself that the “uni-sex” notion is wrong. But I also believe that a lot of people fail to recognize that individual boys are different and that those differences should be respected (without compromising standards, of course). Speaking of homogeneity, that wrongheaded principle has been operative for generations in the traditional approach to mandatory boys’ P.E., which was designed to meet the needs of athletically inclined boys only. No fitness programs were provided for the nonathletic boys, despite the claim that the… Read more »

I like it but you know, it talks about the problem, not the solution. How do we set up a safe system of competition or allow roughhousing and make sure nobody gets hurt? Who is going to design a system that both allows some to win and some to lose while keeping in check the egos of the winners and looks and builds up the ones who lose? There is another coin here, not just the gender one. The fact is we need to eliminate some of the practices written about here, that is one side, but on the other… Read more »

0

| ReplyShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Archy

4 years 5 months ago

Teach kids to identify their strengths and weaknesses, encourage them to work on both. That kid who doesn’t win the race? He may be awesome at art, let them know it’s valuable instead of just praising sports. Teach them ways to raise their self esteem, instill a sense of good sportsmanship in each other (so winners can encourage the “losers”), make team based sports or activities, mix it up so everyone “gets a turn” with the good group. When it’s based on individualism then the individual may feel left out, so mix it up with teamwork so they can feel… Read more »

0

| ReplyShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Bill

4 years 5 months ago

The question I would raise, though, with all due respect is why all children should be forced to participate in sports in the first place. Why is this necessary? Should all children be forced to play band instruments, take ballet lessons, or participate in games of chess; or isn’t this a matter of personal preference? The point is not to detract from anyone’s enjoyment of sport, but simply to not subject nonathletic students to pointless humiliation and bullying. The assumption seems to have been made for generations that participation in sports is absolutely vital for boys and that those who… Read more »

0

| ReplyShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Gustavus

4 years 4 months ago

I think that there needs to be SOME physical activity for everyone. It might be a process to determine what each individual student likes, and that’s all right. Of course some students learn differently from the norm amongst other members of their sex. That’s fine. Perhaps we could have classrooms orientated toward a certain style of learning, and students who don’t succeed in this model get counselling to help them find a classroom better suited to their learning style. I would like to teach at an All Boys school, but I believe that the ideal form of single-sex education in… Read more »